Karel Klíč

Who was Karel Klíč?

Karel Václav Klíč was a Czech painter, photographer and illustrator. He was one of the inventors of photogravure.

Klíč has such artistic talent that he was admitted into the Art Academy in Prague at the age of 14. For ridiculing school officials he was soon expelled, but eventually finished the school in 1862. Klíč worked as a photographer, caricaturist and illustrator in Brno, Budapest and Vienna, all the time trying to improve the technology of picture reproduction. During last night of 1877, while working with zinc relief etching, he discovered, by chance, a process leading to photogravure. He further improved the process in 1890, when working in England.